


Scraps and Squeaks

by Blame Canada (OneHitWondersAnonymous)



Category: South Park
Genre: Developing Relationship, Falling In Love, Happy Ending, It's A Surprisingly Relevant Tag, Kenny's Weird Accent, Light Angst, M/M, Poverty, Sloppy Makeouts, Weird Fluff, dumpster diving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 17:02:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13369173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneHitWondersAnonymous/pseuds/Blame%20Canada
Summary: Kenny would call dumpster diving a hobby if it meant dodging from the truth of it- that sometimes, it was what he needed to do to keep his family afloat. Finding company while doing so wouldn't have occurred to him as a possibility either, until an ethereal garbage guardian caught him in the act and twitched disapprovingly in his general direction. It admittedly wasn't the best way to start a friendship, but maybe that made it more intimate, and that could explain why whenever he showed up, Kenny felt like maybe he could give civilized life a shot.Rated T for language. Twenny. Where fluff and angst meet somewhere in the middle, but definitely in fluff's corner. One-shot.





	Scraps and Squeaks

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all, and welcome to some sweet rarepair content that I've been working on for several months now here and there! I'm rather happy with this one, so I hope you will be too. The working title of this fic has been: "dumpster diving is a cheap date," in case you wanted to know (but mostly because I like to share). Enjoy!

The adults in a child’s life are supposed to teach them manners, generally speaking. Things like,  _ ‘Don’t speak with your mouth full,’ _ and  _ ‘Say please and thank you.’ _ Then of course, there were the general life lessons, like  _ ‘Don’t talk to strangers,’ _ and  _ ‘Keep your hands to yourself.’ _ To make a long story short, Kenny did not have these adults in his life. Anything Kenny learned was by the good grace of his friends’ mothers and fathers, and whatever he managed to pick up by watching. 

Kenny did an awful lot of watching. He liked watching his friends’ football practices. He liked to watch his brother and sister play dolls together. He sometimes watched his mother’s chest to be sure she kept breathing after particularly messy breakdowns on the busted open couch in his sad excuse for a living room.

This was off topic. Life lessons, right.

It was because of this lack of moral guidance and general understanding of human courtesy that Kenny had never learned the valuable lesson of  _ ‘Don’t dumpster dive at two in the morning from local businesses,’ _ and why when he popped out of a giant rusty metal box with a stale donut between his teeth, he was met with a highly suspicious glare that looked much too close to parental scolding than a teenager should be able to express.

He didn’t outwardly scold him though, and perhaps that was worse, because Kenny just felt like not one but a thousand pairs of eyes were staring him down and judging him from above, like this boy had the command of angels behind him to shame the evildoers he came across. Dark as they were in the dimly lit alleyway, made even darker by the silhouette effect of the open door that spilled light around his shape, Tweek Tweak’s eyes were blazing.

“I saw that,” he said, his voice its usual tentative wavering tenor, but still somehow managing to make Kenny cringe out of guilt. He slowly pulled the donut out from his mouth but kept it poised in his hand, ready for a proper bite.

“Yeah?” he replied, because Kenny wasn’t sure what else was appropriate to respond with when caught eating old pastries in a giant trash can.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to wander around at two a.m.?” Tweek said.

Kenny was then very confidently able to give him an overly cheerful answer of, “Nope.”

Tweek didn’t give any signs of going back inside like Kenny was hoping for, and so he was faced with the uncomfortable fact that this boy would be watching him struggle to climb out of a dumpster. He clutched his small bag full of more leftover treats that he was extremely excited to bring home. They weren’t always on the top of the pile, but he’d been lucky today, and promptly and literally dove in like a starving rat. Truth be told, he wasn’t much different from a starving rat, but that was irrelevant. To make a point, his stomach rumbled angrily and he was pretty sure Tweek heard it, because his demeanor switched from angry to concerned on a dime. “Hey, when was the last time you had something to-”

“Mind ya business,” Kenny snapped, but felt bad about it when Tweek recoiled. “I dunno. I’m gonna go now. Hopin’ these’re open to the public?” He lifted up his bag with a sly grin, and Tweek rolled his eyes.

“Sure, just don’t come back like this. I-It’s still technically stealing!”

Kenny chuckled, shaking his head slightly, and sent his most charming smile Tweek’s way. “If that’s the case, I been stealin’ from ya for years, sweetheart,” he drawled, and Tweek crossed his arms with an angry grunt. Kenny was surprised; his signature Lopsided Boy-Next-Door Grin (all rights reserved) usually did the trick. It appeared Tweek was immune, but he’d rather believe it was the lighting obstructing his view. It could also have to do with the fact that he was standing in a pile of garbage. He couldn’t possibly be losing his touch. The boys always took a little more sweet-talking than the girls anyway.

With a grunt and a heave he clambered out of the dumpster in what was probably his cleanest execution yet, but when he turned around with his arms in the air like a gymnast to boast, Tweek was still staring at him with his unchanging suspicious eyes. He shrugged, and shot a peace sign over his shoulder as he jogged away. “Nice seein’ ya!” he called, but the only answer he got was the loud slam of Tweek’s door shutting.

Kenny slowed his pace after rounding the corner and took a bite of his donut, feeling the sugar seep into his bones. He looked down into his bag as he walked, to take inventory on what he’d snagged, and ripped off a piece of a cinnamon roll that had gotten soiled by something he couldn’t identify. It was probably fine. They’d eaten basically garbage before. He tossed the scrap underhanded into his front yard as soon as he made it there, to keep the rats occupied. The look on Karen’s face when he magicked the rest of the roll in front of her eyes proved that McCormicks didn’t care much about missing corners and misshapen pastries. As long as the center, the heart of it, was there, it was fine.

They ate their sweets at three in the morning on a school night, not a word between them in the light of the lightbulb that hung loose over their dining table, and went to bed with sugar on their lips and in their blood.

 

* * *

 

When Kenny came back to the Tweek Bros Coffeehouse far beyond curfew about three weeks later, he almost passed it by. A quick glance didn’t show anything tasty or remotely edible on the top layer of waste, and there were other dumpsters to check more worth his time. He hesitated, though, because there was a suspiciously pristine, small plastic bag resting atop the rest of the garbage he nearly missed. In his many years of perusing the trash, he knew this not to be a usual product in the Tweaks’ possession.

Perhaps his stomach had been a little more empty to leave room for a little more curiosity that evening. He couldn’t be sure, not really, but he took the time to reach in and pull the flimsy trash bag out. It was knotted loosely and he pulled it apart with ease in his holey gloves. When he tilted it toward the light, a tiny delighted gasp escaped him. Inside sat a plethora of beautiful baked goods, looking surprisingly fresh and oh so delectable, nestled amongst each other in a gooey, sugary mess. His mouth watered heavily at the sight. “Fucking  _ jackpot,” _ he muttered to himself.

“Don’t tell my parents,” a voice whispered, scaring the shit out of Kenny and making him jump, yelp, and nearly drop his precious new cargo. He whipped around to find Tweek latched onto the doorway, the same golden lamplight darkening his frame so that only the edges of him glowed.

“Don’t tell ‘em what?” Kenny chanced, carefully twisting the bag up to retie it so that if Tweek made any sudden movements he could bolt with the goods. Tweek did no such thing, however, and instead began to recede into the building and shut the door with him.

“I can keep them separate if I do the garbages,” Tweek said. Ah, that explained it.

“You did this?” Kenny asked, eyebrows raised while he gestured at the trash bag. Tweek nodded at him. His eyes were wide, as though he was still fearful that Kenny would tattle and get him in trouble with his parents, as though they were still ten years old. “Uh, thanks,” Kenny mumbled awkwardly. He wasn’t very good at accepting gifts. Tweek nodded again.

“Um… W-Which one is your favorite?” Tweek asked, his voice a hushed squeak that still managed to crack despite its low volume.

“I don’t really care what I eat, to be honest with you,” Kenny said, scratching at his head and glancing away from Tweek to try to hide some of his embarrassment. It didn’t really work. “Karen likes the cinnamon stuff, though, and Kev likes chocolate.”

“What about your mom?” Tweek asked, and Kenny was so caught off guard he nearly forgot what they were talking about. He could have kissed him right there, for thinking of his mother, because Kenny doubted that anybody else in this god-forsaken town did. He really, honestly could have kissed him. Tweek was several yards away though, and trying to make an exit, and Kenny still had stains on his pants from earlier dives. It wasn’t quite the right mood.

When he came to his senses, he smiled warmly. “She’s just like me, but I think she secretly likes the cinnamon too.”

Tweek nodded a third time, this time with more conviction, and smiled back. It was a shaky smile, nothing worth writing home about, but it was strangely hard-hitting, because Kenny didn’t think Tweek was the kind who would be able to fake a smile. He didn’t say anything else, just slipped back into the light of the coffee shop and shut the door much gentler this time than the last. Kenny gave the closed door an enthusiastic salute, and hopped out of the dumpster.

A week later, there were twice as many cinnamon rolls as chocolate croissants.

 

* * *

 

“You should come to the shop when it’s open, man,” Tweek said, his back propped up against his door frame as it so often was nowadays. “I can’t make hot drinks this late.”

Kenny grunted and rubbed his hands together, the cold of the late evening biting him a little more harshly than most days. His gloves had finally disintegrated a week prior so his skin was left bare, and his fingers often felt tingly and pained from their exposure to the winter air. They were well into January, and so there were many more months of this to go. Kenny wasn’t sure when the next clothing drive would be that he would be able to snatch a new pair, so he suffered through in the meantime. He watched Tweek’s eyes dart down to watch his hands create friction before flicking back up and connecting with his.

At some point, Tweek had started to wait up for him. It wasn’t every night, and Kenny didn’t go out every night anyway, but more than once he’d snuck his way up to the dumpster corral behind Tweek Bros and found him waiting against the door, with a plastic bag in one hand and tapping at his phone in the other. Kenny’s chest had swelled at the sight the first time, and though he refused to acknowledge it as anything but a wave of nausea due to the hunger, he knew what it really was. He just wished it wasn’t so. As suave as he could sometimes be, Kenny was not very good at pursuing relationships with people he liked for real.

“Do you need new gloves?” Tweek asked, and Kenny could cry, because the kid was so sweet to him all the time that he didn’t know how to properly express his gratitude. He started to fish around in the back room of the coffee shop, the door propped open awkwardly with the end of his foot so that he didn’t completely close it on Kenny.

“There’re clothing drives every once in awhile,” Kenny insisted, weakly, and Tweek shook his head, seemingly ignoring him.

“I don’t see anything here, but give me a night, a-and I’ll see what I can do, man.” Tweek straightened up and let the door mostly close behind him, careful to keep his heel wedged in so he wouldn’t end up locked out.

“You really don’t gotta do somethin’ like that, Squeaks,” Kenny said, and by the way Tweek’s eyes widened at his use of his newest nickname, he knew he’d managed to break through his composure. “I’ll be fine.”

“I never said you c-could… could just call me that.”

Kenny grinned. “Nah, you didn’t, but I know you like it. See, it’s cute, ‘cuz you make all these li’l noises that are kinda like-”

“-A squeaky toy, yes, you told me!” Tweek’s neck flushed, then his face, so that his cheeks looked hot and swollen with color. Kenny was really trying very hard to impress him. He laughed.

“A'ight. Thanks for the sugar rush,” Kenny said, lifting his full plastic bag a bit to gesture at it, and Tweek smiled as he nodded.

“See you soon, Kenny,” Tweek said quietly, his eyes downcast and his face just as flushed as it had been a moment ago, when Kenny embarrassed him. He was still smiling, so Kenny didn’t think it was bad, per say. He gave him a lazy salute and dodged the large overflowing bags of garbage that obstructed his path out of the alleyway and back onto the street. Tweek’s door didn’t shut until he turned the corner.

On the Saturday after that, Kenny opened up his bag on his kitchen table to find a pair of generic, but new, knitted gloves, wrapped carefully in baker’s parchment paper.

 

* * *

 

Despite all the ugly things that went on within the four walls of his old shack of a home, Kenny loved his family. His siblings were just trying to grow, his mother just trying to survive, and though Kenny would rather his father rot in hell for all his crimes, he supposed he cared a bit about him too. He had to put in his own effort to keep them all breathing and eating, and that was just the way it had always been.

The shame that should probably have come with dumpster-diving for nourishment was left safely at his doorstep, when he thought of it like that.

With a new job on his roster Kenny was now working two of them, and though it brought in more money that could go toward groceries and other living expenses they’d otherwise go without, sometimes he still came up short. He hated it. He wished he could do better by them.

This time, his mother had been too ill to work for several days, and it cut into their budget immensely. Even with picking up some of his coworkers’ shifts, Kenny was still running on empty. He didn’t particularly  _ like _ crawling through trash to find something to tide him and his family over, but sometimes it didn’t seem there was any other option. He’d done so well, too, had gone so long without resorting to that age-old practice. He still knew the best places to go though, and he made his first stop where he used to visit most nights of the week when times were rougher.

He hopped in past the miscellaneous trash bags guarding the bins with relative ease, and brushed off his pants with a sigh. He paused a moment to allow his head to stop aching from the sudden movement, pressing his palms into his temples as though it might help.

“Why are you here?” Tweek said, and Kenny swore and jumped, not having noticed him in his usual doorway haunt. Kenny squinted, to be sure it was real. He hadn’t been here in ages- why would Tweek be waiting up for him still?

“I could ask ya the same thing, Squeaks. What’re you doin’ out in the cold like-”

“Don’t call me that,” Tweek snapped, and Kenny sobered up. He was obviously in some sort of real trouble, if Tweek was so irritated.

“Well s’cuse me,” Kenny rolled his eyes, his voice low and defensive. “Figured you might be happy I got myself outta the gutters and didn’t hafta eat garbage for dinner.” 

“Y-you were using me!” Tweek spat, his face turning pink from the anger he was brewing. Tweek turned red a lot. “You stopped coming here, a-and I never heard from you again. I-I thought we were, I dunno, maybe friends, or something, but you ignored me at school and I didn’t want to bother you, so.” He started to mumble the longer he talked, and Kenny’s heart started to sink in kind. He  _ had _ kind of used him.

There was an awkwardly long pause between them in which Kenny took the time to acknowledge his sins, to stare down at his sneakers and cower under Tweek’s thousand angel stare. His eyes were just as intimidating as they had been the first time he’d been caught, and Kenny would be lying if he said it didn’t elicit a skipped heartbeat deep in his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he finally settled on, looking up to meet Tweek’s smoldering eyes to be as candid as he possibly could manage. Tweek looked startled at first, broken from the act of his aggression, but he regained composure by narrowing his eyes and pulling his jacket tighter around his shoulders. He said nothing, and Kenny had a feeling it was because he expected more out of him. He sighed, and shrugged weakly. “Ain’t got an excuse, Squeaks. I never meant to hurt your feelings.”

Tweek deflated a bit too, the feathers on his imaginary wings relaxing from their ruffled state. The bags under his eyes seemed to fill with their bruised purple blood again, and he hunched over into his chest. “I accept your apology,” he mumbled, and Kenny smiled, though he tried to contain it out of respect for Tweek’s feelings.

“Come on,” Tweek said, and it took Kenny a moment to register the hand motion waving him closer and the way he pushed back on the door to open it farther for them both.

“Are you takin’ me to your secret murder dungeon?” he teased, and Tweek froze and squawked.

“Jesus, no! Do those exist? I don’t have one!” Tweek insisted, and Kenny giggled at him.  

“Nah, I’m just pickin’. Speakin’ of,” he murmured, lowering his volume as he stepped into the back room of the coffee house, “you know you’re s’posed to take the trash out ‘n not in, right?” He had never actually been back here. All he knew were the hazy outlines that he could make out from his perch on the dumpster, when Tweek was backlit with gold. There were shelves and shelves full of coffee and various baking supplies, and a few massive basins with dirty baking sheets half-submerged in sudsy water. A hand grabbed his arm and he jumped slightly, jolted from his stupor.

“You’re not trash, Kenny,” Tweek said, and he said it with such clarity that Kenny had to remind himself who he was talking to. Tweek, who didn’t know how to speak in a straight line, was looking at him so seriously, the grip on his arm firm but still gentle. His fingers felt bony and cold, even through his coat.

Kenny decided to do exactly what his heart told him to; he leaned forward, and planted a gentle, silent kiss on Tweek’s forehead, right above his right eyebrow. His skin felt unbelievably soft against his lips. In the moment, it was the only way Kenny knew how to say thank you.

“What…” Tweek started, and he seemed to take a few moments to boot up, as though Kenny’s chaste touch had caused a full system reset on his brain. “What was…” He raised a hand shakily to his forehead, grazing the spot Kenny had kept his eye on ever since his lips had left it, and finally looked into Kenny’s eyes. His were wide, so incredibly wide and yellow-green and dewy in the glow of the dim lamps above them.

“I-is it weird to say I missed you?” Tweek whispered. One heartbeat, two. Both their eyes glanced slightly down.

Then they moved forward, and Kenny slid one hand across Tweek’s cheek at the same time that Tweek grabbed his coat, and they collided all at once. Their lips met hungry and passionate, and Kenny let his eyes slide shut as he relaxed into the frenzied twisting of their tongues. At some point, he pushed Tweek backwards into the shelves against the wall, but all it did was plant Tweek firmly in place so that he could use his other hand to hold his other cheek. He threaded his fingers back along his scalp past his ear and into his wild hair, and Tweek hissed into their fragmented kisses, gripping Kenny’s coat a little tighter. All the while, Kenny felt his chest fill up with light, the blessings from heaven above casting warmth into each fiber of his being the longer he spent intertwined with an angel in disguise.

He lost track of time, his only interest in the feeling of Tweek’s hair in his hand and the curve of his back as it dipped and rounded into his ass that was hard to feel over jeans but still felt hot in the moment. Tweek had his arms slung around Kenny’s neck and his grip on the back of his coat now instead of the front, and Kenny let his mind wander to how tightly he’d be gripping his back if they’d-

“Kenny,” Tweek gasped, breaking off their make out session and his meandering thoughts, and Kenny pulled apart, so begrudgingly that he nearly whined at the disappointment. “It’s late. I, I need to…” he kissed him again, short and hard, oddly sweet. “I need you to go.”

“But I jus’ got here, baby, c’mon,” he slurred, only then finding the energy to open his eyes again, and he was met with a wry grin that looked much too enticing when he was much too compromised.

“Y-you already wanna call me baby?” Tweek whispered, the excitement in his tone making Kenny’s hair stand on end.

“I’ll always call you baby, baby,” Kenny murmured as he nipped at Tweek’s ear, and Tweek giggled, and Kenny felt his heart soar with every one of his fried nerves.

“We should talk,” Tweek said, “but later. It’s so late, you’re looking like me.” He reached up and brushed his thumb under Kenny’s eye, where he was sure to have dark circles from recent lack of sleep.

“A’ight, we’ll talk,” Kenny relented, and he slowly disconnected every limb twisted up in him. It felt like torture, but everything felt like torture now, especially when the feelings he was having were so suddenly assaulting him that nothing made any sense. Maybe that was why they should talk. He couldn’t make heads or tails of it, except that he knew he wanted everything to do with Tweek to have everything to do with him- very, very abruptly.

“Oh!” Tweek exclaimed, straightening up and brushing down his shirt where it had ridden up from the friction between their bodies, “I almost forgot. I have something.”

“You have something?” Kenny asked, eyebrows raised, and Tweek smiled softly.

“I’ve always had something, you just haven’t shown up,” Tweek said, and the way he said it in his usual anxious rushed mess made Kenny feel guilty and sad, so he kissed it away. Kissing Tweek was suddenly one of Kenny’s favorite things to do. God, he didn’t know what had happened to him in the last half hour, but he wasn’t going to question  _ any _ of it if it made his heart race this quickly.

Tweek dashed around the corner of the middle row of shelves, disappearing before Kenny’s eyes. “You weren’t lyin’ about that murder dungeon, were ya?” he asked, and Tweek snorted.

“No, stop it. Here.” He came back around the bend, and in his arms was a large paper bag that nearly obstructed his vision. He stepped carefully toward Kenny and then dropped it in his arms. Kenny peered over the top of the bag to sneak a look inside.

In a pile sat croissants and pastries and cupcakes just like Tweek had always given him, would always give him, and he felt a rush of adoration flood his senses like a tidal wave. “Tweek…” he trailed off, never sure how to reply.

“I still set them aside, every night. I-I didn’t even know if you would-if you would come back. I just didn’t want you to ever feel so hungry you had to weed through scraps. I didn’t… I didn’t want that on my hands, man.” Tweek’s gaze was so earnest, so pure and slightly guilt-ridden, that Kenny couldn’t help but chuckle slightly at him. Tweek turned irritated in a flash, and Kenny sobered up by clearing his throat.

“Sorry, it’s just- it’s really cute. You’re cute.” Tweek blushed, and though the execution needed work, he still considered it a success.

“Go home, Kenny,” Tweek said, the smile on his lips sweetening his words, “I’ll text you.”

Three words to make his heart race again. “Don’t think I got your number,” Kenny admitted, and Tweek listed it off for him, and Kenny set down his bag of treats to type it into his contacts. He named him ‘Squeaks’ with a yellow heart emoji. “I’ll text you?”

“Yes, we’ll talk. Go home! You need to go,” Tweek insisted, and he pushed at Kenny’s back toward the door with bubbling laughter in his throat. Kenny twisted around when he reached the doorway and he stood at the threshold, looking into Tweek like he could really see through him. He could see every detail up close, and the golden lining that usually decorated his form was like a soft glow that hugged along his every edge and curve, bleeding amber into his center.

Kenny freed one hand to take Tweek’s chin with his curled pointer finger, and he very carefully tilted his head up to kiss him, tender and sweet. “I’ll text you,” he insisted, and Tweek giggled, ducking away from his touch moments after they disconnected.

“Okay,” Tweek said, and the warmth from his heart warmed Kenny’s too.

The trek back home felt instantaneous, yet at the same time each step felt feather-light and like he was floating. His toes hit the ground as little as possible, like he was hopping clouds, and he figured it must have been the angel dust that Tweek spread all around him. He giggled to himself, giddy and confused - it was all so confusing, but so wonderful.

His family was delighted by his delivery, and they sat around the table like they always did when he brought them goodies. He pulled out his phone when it buzzed twice.

 

_    Tomorrow? _

 

He tapped a response and smiled.

 

_    tomorrow _

 

Tomorrow would come and they would talk, but tonight, Kenny would fall asleep with sugar in his stomach, and green eyes and flaxen hair in his dreams.


End file.
